Apex 2013: Straight to the Top
Comments from album director Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword)
Album freely available at http://ocremix.org/info/Apex_2013:_Straight_to_the_Top

Working on Straight to the Top has been a real rush! I'm really excited to help OC ReMix get involved in some new ways of promoting video game music; making an official album for a an event is something we've never done before and it's been really fun and interesting working with the folks over at Apex Series. I want to give a big shout out to John "Alex Strife" Lugo over at Apex who came up with this whole thing, Cristin "Crismas" DeSaro, another Apex-ite who put together the killer album art, John Ryan, the fellow who wrote the excellent original theme for Apex 2013, and of course all of the OC ReMixers who stepped up and put out some really killer remixes. I hope everyone enjoys the album! And if you can't make it out to Apex this year, make sure to be there the next!

- Shariq Ansari (DarkeSword)

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OCR02579: Mikeaudio - Super Smash Bros. 'Polygons Are Inaccurate'

Mike was one of the first guys who heeded the call for remixes for Apex. I had asked for something really high energy and he delivered in spades. I was very excited that he chose a song completely original to Smash Bros. as well; while most folks remember all of the classic Nintendo music in Smash games, the series has some killer original tunes as well. Some really rockin' guitars and great synth leads in this piece, along with some awesome dancey percussion that keeps things going. Love it.

OCR02580: DarkeSword - Persona 4 Arena 'Little Arena'

One of my own meager contributions the album. The title theme of Persona 4 Arena is a very straight up Japanese rock track, so I wanted to go in a little bit of a different direction. I mixed together some chip sounds, jazzy drums and rhodes, and my own classic fakey sax sound for a bumpin' backing track to a combo video. The more relaxed section in the middle is for the part of the video where you can review the techniques in slo-mo. Hopefully, some enterprising video editor/Persona 4 fanboy has some fun with this.

OCR02581: WillRock - King of Fighters XIII 'One-Hit KO (Bye Esaka Mix)'

Isn't King of Fighters great? It's always had a very classic anime feel to it, in my opinion, sort of perpetually hanging on to that old-school Neo-Geo style. Even the newer games like XIII feature great 2D sprite work! WillRock's mix keeps with that old-school feel with a lot of great chippy and synthy stuff. The piano and polysynth leads remind me a lot of classic PSX/Saturn-era games when game composers discovered Red Book audio but still clung to the classic synth sounds. Funky as all get out.